The Wandering Count

As we await the Canada-Russia hockey game this afternoon, most Canadians will be thinking of Jarome Iginla when they hear the name "Iggy". But I was struck by thoughts of someone else when reading last night a passage from Yuri Slezkine's book, The Jewish Century. Slezkine was discussing the turn in 1930s Soviet policy from the earlier 1920s identification of the ideal Soviet citizen as an internationalist, to the growing reliance of the Stalin regime on the promotion of Russian nationalism.

On pages 279-80 we find Slezkine illustrating this development with a passage from the Jewish writer Lev Kopelev, then still, in the 1930s, a true believer in the Commmunist system:

The young Lev Kopelev had not been alone in being impressed by Stalin's "We do not want to be beaten" speech. "It was then that I, a convinced internationalist, a Soviet patriot, and a representative of the newly formed multinational Soviety people, began to feel an acute sense of hurt and injustice on behalf of Russia, Russian history, and the Russian word."

I was very pleased with this new turn in political propaganda and historical research, this decisive rejection of national nihilism. The party confirmed and affirmed what I had felt since childhood and became conscious of in my youth.

Such concepts as the "Motherland," "patriotism," the "people," and "national" were being restored. And I mean restored - because previously they had been toppled, overthrown....

I enjoyed the films about Peter the Great, Alexander Nevsky, and Suvorov; I liked the patriotic poems by Simonov, the books by E. Tarle and the "Soviet Count," Ignatiev; I reconciled myself to the return of officers' ranks and epaulets.

The "Soviet Count" Ignatiev? This line shocked me as in my limited knowledge of Russian history I had always associated the Ignatiev family solely with the Czarist regime (and indeed they became refugees from the Bolsheviks which is why today the "Soviet Count's" great grandson, Michael Ignatieff, has been able to grasp for power as the unelected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada).

I have seen on occasion Canadian bloggers with an anti-Michael Ignatieff agenda pointing out that Michael's great grandfather, the Count Ignatiev, was the Czar's Minister of the Interior at the start of the violent pogroms in 1881, which some historians believe he tacitly encouraged, and the man who headed the introduction of the May Laws which aimed to limit Jewish settlement in rural areas while at the same time limiting Jewish access to higher education in the urban centres. This was the start of the period of the three great Jewish migrations away from their former homes in the Russian empire's Pale of Settlement - to the Americas, to Israel, and to the cities of the Russian (and later Soviet) empire, the last being the focal point of Slezkine's book.

Now I understand there is some difference of opinion about the antisemitic intent of Count Ignatiev's policies. Some would see them as anti-Jewish only to the extent they were a way of trying to keep peace and order among an antisemitic peasantry and thus actually to protect Jews from pogroms. But, as I also understand it, the more dominant line of interpretation from Western historians is less sympathetic to the Count.

So it is not surprising to me that the politically-calculating Michael Ignatieff makes very little of his Russian ancestry in public. But that the Soviets rehabilitated the memory of Count Ignatiev when they sought to promote Russian nationalism in the 1930s was news to me. I have done a little Googling today and have not yet found more information on this phenomenon. Perhaps the sources in English on the internet will prove too limited for a relatively small historical concern. But I did find an interesting portrait of Michael Ignatieff in a 2008 paper by Valery Tishkov that is discussing, among other things, the worldwide Russian diaspora as an aspect of Russian influence and power in today's global village. Tishkov writes:

If one were to exclude from the total number of historical emigrants from Russia and their descendants all those who are completely assimilated and cannot speak Russian—all those who consider themselves to be French, Argentine, Mexican, or Jordanian and have no sense of connection to Russia—even so the number of “overseas countrymen” would remain large and difficult to define through objective” traits. Membership in a diaspora depends upon self-identity and reflects emotional choice.

Here is a personal example. I was acquainted with the late George Ignatieff, the famous Canadian diplomat and rector of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He not only considered himself Canadian but, precisely, a “Russian– Canadian” (which was what Nikita Khrushchev had taken him to be when they met at the UN and when Ignatieff went to the USSR in 1955 as part of the official Canadian delegation). There is no question that Count Ignatieff should be considered to be part of the Russian diaspora.

Almost 20 years later I met his son, Michael Ignatieff, a well known journalist and writer, who did not know a single word of Russian, and considered himself part of the Canadian diaspora in England, stating that, “For me, being a Canadian,” he said, “is simply one of those privileges that I received as a birth-right.” To categorize the younger Ignatieff as a member of the Russian diaspora would have been an obvious usurpation of his right to choose how to live his own life. In 1987 he wrote a marvelous book called The Russian Album, about his journey to a childhood to which he could no longer return and his connections to family heirlooms.

For a reader in Russia the book is a historical and cultural document created by a member of the Russian diaspora despite the fact that Michael himself would not grant this. However, during a meeting with him in his bohemian apartment in old London in January 1997, he did not look like a representative of the Russian diaspora, unlike his father, whom I had seen in Toronto.

However, Michael wrote the following curious words about him: “At the same time he always kept himself apart from the Russian emigration, with its fractional intrigues and antediluvian politics. When I was a child he always seemed more Canadian than Russian to me. Even today he remains a more patriotic and sentimental Canadian than I am myself. For him Canada was the country that gave him a new life.” In London Michael told me that he was first of all an Englishman because his mother was English.

However, in 2006, when he decided to run for prime minister of Canada as a Liberal Party candidate, he emphasized his “Canadianness” as his sole and unquestioned identity. Which of the two Ignatieffs was part of the diaspora, and which of them belonged to the “Russian world?” There is no clear answer. Identity drift of an individual or a group can be situational and, in any event, dynamic. A great deal depends upon instrumental (or personal) calculations and also on the economic and political influences of the country of exodus and that of emigration.

So one wonders what Valery Tishkov would make of Michael Ignatieff's current siding with the enemies of Israel lodged in Canada's so-called "Rights and Democracy" agency/bureaucracy. Are his Russian roots showing, or perhaps his aristocratic prejudices? Or is this "Englishman" just being pulled around by the prejudices of the party that allowed him to become their unelected leader? Many have wondered, just what is this latest version of the Counts Ignatieff. In any case, let us rest easy for the moment, knowing that when Canada plays Russia, it's safe to cheer for Iggy.

Monsieur Iggy

During the last Liberal Party of Canada leadership campaign in 2006, I wrote Michael Ignatieff to ask what he had to say about his Quebec lieutenant, Denis Coderre, attending what was a de facto Hezbollah rally in Montreal. Iggy's office gave me the run around, and put me on their mailing list (figuring, I guess, that there must be a few genuine Liberals pissed off about Hezbollah).

So, I received a note an hour ago telling me that Michael wanted me to be among the first to know he was again throwing his hat in the leadership ring. I have always thought it strange that a man who has spent most of his adult life outside of Canada wants to be our Prime Minister. Then again, maybe it is his mission in life to save us from Bob Rae. Anyway, I see Iggy is giving off signs that he has initiated himself into the Liberal Party view of Canada. To quote from the letter:

...we need to listen to each and every Liberal. Indeed, we need to listen to each and every Canadian. [OK MIKE: no more sucking up to terrorists, or even just ideological Islamists!] We must let everyone know that this campaign is really more about them than it is about me.
[...]
Tous ensemble, riding by riding, person by person, we can renew our Party and bring Canada back.

That's the last paragraph of the letter. The French version follows. Here's the last paragraph of that:

Tous ensemble, comté par comté, personne par personne, nous pouvons renouveler notre parti et retrouver notre Canada.

I'm just curious, is it normal in the Liberal worldview to make the ritualistic nod to bilingualism only in the English version? There's no English in the French version.

Silly season: election Carnival and the inversion of Society

Perhaps it's just my innate silliness, but I can't associate "Flavelle" and "Liberal" without thinking of righteous pork barrels, not to mention Hogtown snobbery.

I have no idea, beyond the provided biographical note, who the writer Christopher Flavelle is, or from whence he comes. Still, fwiw, silly is what I think of What's the matter with Canada? - By Christopher Flavelle - Slate Magazine which portrays Stephen Harper as some kind of radical evil who is, among other things, only a step away from outlawing abortion, and socialized medicine, and outrageously lowering taxes to the point of threatening budgetary surpluses!

Well, some folks can dream...

The article is not to debate seriously, but I link it because I think it is a worthwhile illustration of the trouble left-liberal politics is having in finding a grand narrative to make sense of our times: I am surely not the only one who sees an increasing reliance on demonization and apocalyptic scare mongering that is out of touch with much of our banal reality.

Perhaps the reason for this loss of touch is because many retain a desire for grand narratives, even when the age of mythical thinking should be ever shrinking and we should no longer be seeking a singular "story of our times" but rather living well in an age of many narratives devoted to protecting and building our shared modernity (the irrational threat to which, from the left-Islamist alliance, helps constitute the only big narrative left, but even then we will eventually win this round against anti-market, anti-freedom forces by destroying their One Big Narrative with more individual freedom for all, even Muslims...).

The desire to understand politics and parties in terms of one big cause for the future (even in Liberal parties that are actually about doing a lot of pork barreling and representing a social and technocratic elite), needs to give way to a greater openness to a truly open-ended modernity that recognizes that the one big cause we all desire, the source of our unity and common humanity, is really something in our past, at the origin of humanity, perhaps only to be known fully again in a heavenly kingdom to come, or maybe not.

Sure, this unity continues to leave its mark on us and on every new instance of our growing intra-cultural diversity; as something forever being built upon, we come to see, and to encourage, its latest twists and turns in good part through engagement in politics. Yet perhaps what well defines a conservative is the belief that our human unity is not what politics should be ultimately about, as some kind of end goal. Our unity is more properly the concern of religion and anthropology. But for many people who don't have a satisfactory religion or anthropology, left-liberal "politics" becomes their religion substitute (as they bravely keep at bay the cynical, if realistic, thought that the "I have a dream of Unity" politicians usually end up with few concrete ideas, beyond pork barreling).

Politics should be about the road to a greater freedom, shared by all. And, as such, is not the desire for a political party with a central grand narrative for our times an anachronism? If so, can today's Liberal Party of Canada re-define itself? Can it become a true big tent coalition that embraces various causes of freedom in ways usefully different from the Conservatives, without recourse to apocalyptic demonization? Isn't talk of Harper's "secret agenda" getting really stale?

I doubt the Liberals are yet close to any such transformation. The mistake of many of them in thinking Stephane Dion was some new era Trudeau (as if that would be a good thing) exemplifies their "national unity" box, so desired and so containing. Our national unity is the precondition for our politics and shared freedom, not its earthly end.

In this light, the lack of piety that Stephen Harper displays for certain Liberal shibboleths is a good thing. And we become silly in our narratives if we take this to mean Harper is at war with all that is sacred and human.

Harper to call election on Sunday; but do we have the freedom to call the NDP and Liberals Islamist-loving fascists?

For those looking for hope that they might find some motivation to fight for the Conservatives under Harper, the man who has had nothing public to say about the "human rights" commission scandal, at least not since he became Prime Minister (he once called the commissions "totalitarian" but now he lives with them), Deborah G. lights a candle:Deborah Gyapong: YES on QUESTION 10 !!!!!!!

Meanwhile, the NDP is running Islamists, which is exactly what their behaviour and supporters of the last few years have led us to expect.

Of course, I have still to hear Stephane Dion publicly denounce those who helped elect him Liberal Party leader with the "Bob Rae's wife is a Jew" slogan.

Don't miss Kathy Shaidle on Appeasing Canada's Islamists.

Liberal Fascists fight back against free speech and real human rights: Write or call your MP this weekend or Monday morning!

After reading countless blogs and newspaper opinion pieces from all kinds of decent Canadians, condemning the Canadian Human Rights Commissions for going after Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, and others exercising their right to free political speech; after reading about the corruption of all due legal processes at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, including, most shockingly, its enabling of investigators who publish hate speech on white racialist web sites all the better to make a case against these web sites for hate speech; after reading of how Liberal MP Keith Martin was going to introduce a motion in the House of Commons calling for a small reform to the Canadian Human Rights Act, removing one of the sections most offensive to free speech in Canada; I was at first shocked, and then reminded of the fanatically religious evil that freedom lovers are up against today, when I read the following headline in the Globe and Mail. 'White pride' website hails Victoria MP as hero. None of the above-mentioned concerns was given any coverage in this story. No, instead, it seems the mainstream media are willing to reduce this all to another question of human rights under attack by White Supremacists and their naive aiders and abettors.

The Canadian Press story, a more complete version of which appears here, by Joan Bryden is discussed by Ezra Levant:

Joan Bryden, Canadian Press's house Liberal, followed Kinsella's memo to the letter. She wrote that wire service's first story on the subject -- not about my interrogation, or about Maclean's, or the YouTube/undernews phenomenon, etc. Her focus was the reddest red herring Kinsella she could find: that, besides 5,000 blogs, dozens of columnists across the political spectrum and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association support Martin's amendment, a no-name white supremacist does too.

"The cases of Levant and Maclean's writer Mark Steyn have sparked much furious debate," wrote Bryden. Well, not enough of a debate for her to write about, though as a journalist her trade depends on freedom of speech. But when she could smear Martin's initiative by a tenuous association, well, that's a newspeg and a headline.

What will the Liberals do?

Bryden quotes a spokesman from Stephane Dion's office as saying the obvious. "This is not the position of the Liberal Party of Canada or the Liberal caucus or Mr. Dion," said spokeswoman Leslie Swartman. Of course not; it was a private member's motion.

But then Swartman went further: "We support the Canadian Human Rights Act and will not entertain changes to it such as this." That may or may not be true; I doubt the Liberal caucus or shadow cabinet has considered the matter. But even if it's true, it could also be said of 95% of private members' business. Bryden herself opines that Swartman's comments "suggested Martin will be asked to withdraw it."

That could be the suggestion. Or it could be Kinsella's Bryden's own troublemaking spin. Martin is clearly digging in -- he's seen the blogs and the wall-to-wall editorials on the one side and, uh, Kinsella on the other side, and he's done the political math. What will Stephane Dion's math be? Will he really risk losing yet another member of his caucus over a private member's motion, something designed to allow MPs to vent ideas outside the lines of their party? Kinsella wants a fight, for his own purposes. Does Dion? Does he want another mini civil war in the Liberal Party to fill the news for a week, as it did so devastatingly last November? And what will he do if other Liberals vote for Martin's motion? Kinsella's a "Kick-Ass" bomb-thrower. But does he know how to hold together a party, demoralized by opposition status, still split along leadership faultlines? Uh, no

What now?

Kinsella's excitement has sped things up. Bryden managed to find someone else to quote before MPs deserted for the weekend: a freshmen NDP MP says he's against the motion. Over the weekend, other MPs and staff will probably chew over the subject, and maybe even do some fact-finding on their own -- and these days, that usually means using Google. It's my guess that by Monday, there will be a lot more MPs with opinions on Martin's motion, and they, too, might see the incredibly disproportionate support for his amendment, across the ideological spectrum. I predict -- though it is a prediction fused with hope -- that next week MPs and even cabinet ministers weigh in on the subject, and that Martin's little private member's motion turns into something much bigger: the first honest, open debate on the Canadian Human Righs Act, well, ever.

Note that, other than Jason Kenney's skirmishing, no Conservatives have commented publicly on this matter. I think that must end next week, if only because the MSM now smells a partisan (or at least intra-Liberal) fight. Thanks to Martin, Kinsella and Bryden, the issue is now firmly associated with a visible minority Liberal MP whose human rights credentials are impeccable. What a perfect political setting for the Conservatives to enter the fray -- calmly, thoughtfully, as followers of Martin and not radical leaders, in a bi-partisan display of their true commitment to human rights: the fundamental human rights of freedom of thought, expression, religion and the press. Next week will be interesting.

Some of Levant's commenters are not so optimistic:

I wish I could agree with you Ezra, but my sense is, from what I've gathered from people I've been chatting up around The Hill, that the Conservative's really don't want to touch this issue with a fifty-thousand foot poll right now.

They maybe onside with you, and onside with us as a whole, but they're piss scared that with them running at 5 points behind the Liberal's in the polls, that this could easily be spun the wrong way in a clearly unsupportive media.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Toronto Star's headline sometime next week is: "RACIST GROUPS PRAISE ATTACK ON HUMAN RIGHTS LAWS".

If the Conservative's jump into the fray, that headline will rather be written: "RACIST GROUPS PRAISE CONSERVATIVE ATTEMPTS TO KILL HUMAN RIGHTS LEGISLATION".

Then of course, you'll have the additional gratuitous nonsense from the Liberals. I can already see it: "First you interfere with the AECL, and now you're interfering with Human Rights Tribunals!".

The Liberal's, lead by Scott Reid, Cherniak and company, will go out of their way to paint this as an alliance between Nazi groups and the Conservatives (we're already seeing that happening) and more Conservative interference in independent government bodies.

This whole thing could backfire huge.

I think we've already established where most of the media stands on this issue.
Mike Brock | Homepage | 02.02.08 - 2:40 am | #

------------

CBC radio news is going apoplectic on the story, and SERIOUSLY spinning it.

No mention of you, Steyn or Macleans, no mention of the hrcs at all, but they sure like talking about "white supremacists".

IOW, no surprises at all from the CBC.
djb | 02.02.08 - 7:11 am | #

In other words, It seems the MSM is gearing up to tell anyone who will listen that the many thousands of Canadians who have been expressing outrage in the blogs and newspapers of the lands are, knowingly or not, all in league with white supremacist neo-nazis. For daring to speak out against officialdom's take on "human rights" in the name of real human rights, we are to be plastered with the tired slander, evoking, but not explaining or validating, the fundamental revelation of the religion of White Guilt, i.e. Auschwitz. We've seen it all before a thousand times. The attempt by the left-liberal elite to avoid or end debate by using emotional name-calling, invoking false moral equivalences, refusing empirical distinctions or real and important differences, instead of facing up to the real issues in play. Keith Martin has put his name on the line in an attempt to have a real open public debate in this country. Now it's time to put yours on the line too. Now is the time to send an email or phone your MP, as well as the Prime Minister's Office. We have to let them know that there are a lot of people out there who really care about this issue.

Take a look at what MP Keith Martin wants to remove from the law, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act:

Hate messages

13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Interpretation
(2) For greater certainty, subsection (1) applies in respect of a matter that is communicated by means of a computer or a group of interconnected or related computers, including the Internet, or any similar means of communication, but does not apply in respect of a matter that is communicated in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a broadcasting undertaking.

Interpretation
(3) For the purposes of this section, no owner or operator of a telecommunication undertaking communicates or causes to be communicated any matter described in subsection (1) by reason only that the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking owned or operated by that person are used by other persons for the transmission of that matter.

R.S., 1985, c. H-6, s. 13; 2001, c. 41, s. 88.

Now check out the definition of "discrimination" in the first part of the Act:

Prohibited grounds of discrimination

3. (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for which a pardon has been granted

In other words, it is illegal in this country to expose a person to "hatred" or "contempt" for pretty much any reason you could imagine. Do you really want a small class of mutually-accrediting officials deciding what intellectual differentiation you make in discussing religion, or sexuality, or family life, or culture, is or is not discriminatory and likely to expose someone to "contempt"? Do you want the law dealing in such subjective terms, and thus able to create thought crimes, as they already have in their very selective applications? Do you really believe such a law can be applied without bringing our traditional ideals of a universally-applied rule of law into contempt? Can any group of "judges" not be corrupted by a need to become politically correct in order to know whom a citizen may criticize on the internet - say "white nationalists" or conservative Christians - and whom one cannot, e.g. certain Muslim organizations or values.

We have entered in this country a time of public insanity brought about by the dominant religion of our postmodern culture: a cult of non-discrimination, the Utopian belief that human beings can somehow share a political space without having to fight for or defend anything, without having any commonly validated, or even permitted, ideas about what is good and what evil, what forms of culture are superior to others, what is a mark of freedom and what of oppression, what is a more or less rational or productive resentment and what is delusional and destructive. Because to have any such ideas you have to be willing to discriminate against someone or some form of religion. You have to take a stand and be willing to deny the Utopian fantasy of a world without conflict. But this fantasy cannot ever come true; holding on to it can only erode the existing order and its means for rational negotiation of our differences in free-speaking and decentralized arenas. The fantasy can only either lead us back into a tribal jungle where people have to join gangs for protection and fight each other without the rule of law to help defer conflict; or, it can only lead us into some kind of totalitarian order where no one, save the officially-accredited Joan Brydens of the world, dare voice their opinion. I mean, there simply haven't been any other kinds of reports on the current "Human Rights" scandal in the Globe and Mail and many other Canadian papers.

We write about these themes often here. If you need more discussion or links, read this blog's archives for the last few weeks. But for me, now is not the time to try and recapitulate all the arguments. As the story quoted at the top of this post suggests, this is the weekend when politicians in Ottawa have to decide what position they're going to take on Keith Martin's motion, at least tentatively. SO, now is the time to get in contact with your MP and let the politicians know how you feel about the cult of non-discrimination. I will only leave you with one more link, to a video which is a very compelling and funny, not too complicated look at how our liberal culture has fallen into the Utopian nonsense of a cult of non-discrimination:


Technorati Tags: Joan Bryden, liberal fascism, free speech, Canadian Human Rights Act, Keith Martin, Ezra Levant, Warren Kinsella, Liberal Party of Canada

Canadian politics: increasingly polarized by antisemitism

Charles sent me this link yesterday: CCD applauds Harper government for withdrawal of support for UN 'anti-racism' conference

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, 23 January, 2008

Ottawa, Canada - The Stephen Harper government has withdrawn its support for a UN anti-racism conference scheduled to take place next year in South Africa, according to a media release today from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, said today that the conference, like its predecessor in 2001, "has gone completely off the rails... Canada is interested in combating racism, not promoting it. We'll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance".

"Canadians are shocked when they hear the clear and simple expression of reality by their leaders," said Alastair Gordon, president of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD). "We are used to hearing double-speak from our politicians -- fantasies that are at odds with the reality that most Canadians see and the values that they hold."

The last UN anti-racism conference held in Durban in 2001 degenerated into a hate-fest of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel vitriol, while the most egregious human rights violators escaped criticism. The Toronto Star today reported that "all of the non-governmental organizations invited to the first conference have been invited back to the second, including those that were at the 'forefront of the hatred', some of which posted pro-Hitler posters at the 2001 gathering."

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is in charge of planning for the conference, an entity that has directed 93% of its resolutions on human rights violations at just one nation - Israel. Iran is a member of the organizing committee, despite its government's open call to wipe the Jewish homeland off the face of the earth.

"The Stephen Harper government has again demonstrated that Canada can project power as a moral leader in international affairs," added Gordon. "A nation does not need a massive military to provide the moral leadership and clarity that denies legitimacy to Orwellian UN agencies that hijack the language of human rights to promote Jew-hatred.

"Stephen Harper has signaled that Canada will act on principle, regardless of UN consensus. This is the stuff of global leadership."

This news drew a reply from Khaled Mouammar, Canadian Arab Federation National President, as noted by Kate at Small Dead Animals. Mouammar states:

Canada's outright rejection of the [UN anti-racism] conference sends a clear message to the Canadian public that the current government is disinterested in promoting human rights and anti-racism. The very fact that Israel was "attacked" at the previous conference indicates that the international community and human rights organizations are in agreement that the occupation of Arab lands, the mistreatment and killing of Palestinians, and the denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return is in violation of international law and will be condemned and no longer accepted.

[...]

"We would also like to remind Jason Kenney that he is a Minister of the Canadian government, not the racist Israeli government; still, CAF is not surprised with Minister Kenney's position given his outright contempt for the Arab and Muslim communities in Canada and his condoning of Islamophobia. This is the same man who attacked a Muslim organization for lodging a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission against Maclean's Magazine for publishing an inflammatory and bigoted article, and who slandered Canadian NGO's at an OSCE Conference in front of the international community"

Kate then goes on to note that Mouammar gained notoriety by circulating a flyer at the last leadership convention of the Liberal Party of Canada, denouncing leading leadership candidate, Bob Rae, for his Jewish connections. As we reported, there was apparently a campaign of slander at the convention, directed at the fact that Bob Rae's wife is Jewish and an official with the Canadian Jewish Congress; and this campaign seems to have led to support for the successful candidacy of the current Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, who, according to Kate, has yet to comment on, or to denounce, this convention vileness.

Anyway, I recently saw the name Khaled Mouammar attached to a comment on the Globe and Mail online article by the four law students taking Mark Steyn and Maclean's to the "human rights" tribunals:

Khaled Mouammar from Richmond Hill, Canada writes: Jewish American writer, Isidore Feinstein Stone, stated that 'Every war, every outburst of genocide, is prepared by propaganda which paints the vicitm, the Other, as less than human. This is the ultimate lesson of Auschwitz, he who treats his brother as less than human prepares the path to the furnace.' Mark Steyn's article in Maclean's Magazine, intentionally or unintentionally, appears to be spreading racism against Muslims by insinuating that the rising number of Muslims in Western societies is sinister and threatens to destroy western societies.

The presentation of the Muslim as a menace, a terrorist, a shadowy figure who operates outside of the accepted value system and is therfore to be feared and mistrusted has gone on for too long and is undermining the multicultural and tolerant fabric of Canada. This racist image of the Muslim is nothing more than the result of the tranference of the popular anti-Semitic animosity from a Jewish to a Muslim target.

There was then a thoughtful reply to this Mouammar from one George Brown - probably someone taking the name of the Globe's founding publisher, the pre-Confederation politician from Canada West.

' Khaled Mouammar from Richmond Hill, Canada writes: Jewish American writer, Isidore Feinstein Stone, stated that 'Every war, every outburst of genocide, is prepared by propaganda which paints the vicitm, the Other, as less than human.... This racist image of the Muslim is nothing more than the result of the tranference of the popular anti-Semitic animosity from a Jewish to a Muslim target.'

I hear this argument often now. It's not true. Judeophobia (strictly speaking there is no 'Semitic' race or religion) is a reaction to the people who claim to be first in covenant with the One God, those who don't give God a name (to be compared with other names in contests over the Greatest God) but who start a new historical era by defining God: 'I am what I am'.

Islamophobia is a reaction to the people who come relatively late to the world of monotheism and who base their claims, not to having the New New Testament, but to having the Koran, the eternal uncreated word of God, that the Jews and Christians who came before never knew entirely or have somehow forgotten or corrupted.

Racism is not racism is not racism. Jews are a race and a religion, Muslims are not. Jews, when hated, are hated for being 'first', for being religious discoverers, which in the hater's mind becomes something conspiratorial. It is an attack on the successful, something still widely allowed in commentary on Israel. Muslims, when hated, are hated for being outsiders with a righteous claim to overcome those who previously left them marginal.

I see no evidence Canadians are laying the ground for a Holocaust of Muslims. I, for one, want to defend your individual freedom to be whoever you want to be; and that means contesting certain group resentments and their claims on the state. A free society can only be based on individual rights, not group claims.

I'm stretching the metaphor, but Stephane Dion needs to take a lead from his great liberal party antecedent, "George Brown", not to mention from Stephen Harper, a man who consistently stands for what he knows is right, with regard to Israel and antisemitism, notwithstanding the political consequences it will have. In contrast, Dion seems willing to reap the rewards. Let's just hope Harper can find the support among Canadians for a majority government so that he can more actively oppose the untruths made in the name of "human rights" in this country.

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Dag and the Party of the Blood-Sucking Tufted-Puffins

"We are a ray of light in a gloomy world, a ray of hope in a world which is in fact ravaged by intolerance and by hatred. Let's get it right. The world does look to us, the world does ask us, 'get it right, show us how'." Michael Ignatieff.

I'm going to confess right here and now that on rare occasions I do make up stuff and present what I say as the real truth. An example will serve to expose me in all my shameful duplicity and serve as well as a warning to those who believe me simply due to my seeming past trustworthiness. It's like this, see: You have problems in your life, and I can tell you how to solve every one of them in all of five minutes, no matter how many or how problematic they are. No problem. I have the answers. My own problems, (as a friend once explained to me,) will take a life-time to deal with.

I do some editing for a worthless Communist who writes very badly for a worthless Communist newspaper. He makes huge bucks at his Communist job, so I squeeze him to make him redistribute the wealth, downward in my case. It takes me an hour to edit his copy, and then two more sessions to make it readable, at which time I tell him I can do no more, walking away with a fairly substantial afternoon's pay in my workingman's pocket. My own copy, that I don't bother proofreading because it's good enough already and I'm a lone genius anyway, whether people recognize it or not, and they seemingly don't, no matter what I tell them. I charge the Communist so much because he argues with me. Not about my editing but about every other thing on earth. (He's really fucking stupid). I tell him, "Listen Communist Wilson, you're putting up a red herring here, and it stinks." I've explained that a red herring is not some mean-spirited jab at Marx and Stalin but he still gets defensive, so I changed tack and said last time: "Communist Wilson, when you bring up a point like that it's like when we're sitting down to coffee and desert at the diner and you bring up a point having nothing at all to do with what I'd just said: I get pissed-off, as you'll recall, and I say 'Hey, Communist Wilson, look in the parking lot, there's a dinosaur eating that spaceship.' " He nods. I continue: "I do that as a diversion so I can then grab your brownie and eat it before you look back at me and catch me." He sort of nods, and I sort of grin real sly like.

Dear reader, there is no dinosaur in the parking lot. Every time I say that to Communist Wilson I do it only to trick him so I can grab his brownie. I'm shameless, I do confess. I think sometimes that my evil lying ways qualify me for the leadership of Canada's Liberal Party. I could be like Michael Ignatieff, only a winner. But, truth to tell-- if you'll ever again believe anything I write-- I'm just not that slimy. Oh, in many ways I'm far worse, being a Rightwing religious bigot and all, but I don't really have what it takes to be a Liberal in Canada. I'm remorseful too because the Liberals are considering a new mascot for The Party, the puffin. I'd look sharp in feathers. Ba Boom!

"Ignatieff says he likes puffin symbol because: Ignatieff: ''They hide their excrement. ... They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell,' he said, pointing to the portly puffin as a symbol worth of the Liberal party."

In a flurry of Romantic poesy I cry out: "I fall upon the rocky shores of Life. I crack open like an egg dropped from a craggy cliff. I yoke."

ST. JOHN'S -- Ah, the noble puffin. Its flappy wings and hidden excrement are an inspiration for Liberals from coast to coast - more so than iconic Canadian fauna like the beaver, goose, bear or moose.

So says deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

"It's a noble bird, because it has good family values - they stay together for 30 years. They lay one egg, and they put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement," he told reporters yesterday.

"They hide their excrement, they have good family values, they flap their wings very hard and they work like hell. This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be."

Yes, dear reader, I can hear you sigh even as I type, 'Dag, you lyin' dawg, how can you expect me to believe that shite?!"

I'm proud to insist it's true.

I do tell some whoppers to Communist Wilson, and I once told a girl a fib or two, but I tell the truth here. I'm willing to lie sometimes, and other times I'm willing to tell the outright obvious truth. We are a ray of light in a gloomy world, a ray of hope in a world which is in fact ravaged by intolerance and by hatred. Let's get it right. The world does look to us, the world does ask us, 'Get it right, show us how.' I can do that for you, dear reader. I can fix up this whole country in about five minutes, and then lots of time to tinker over the next twenty or so years till pension time kicks in. Send that check, folks, cause I mended my ways and I think I'm gonna run for office.

I'll get it right, I'll show you how. Trust me. Hey look over there! That dinosaur is eating that spaceship!

DAG! I'm no longer a Right wing religious bigot. I'm still known as somewhat cranky even if I'm now a Liberal, so I propose the Blood-sucking Tufted-puffin as our mascot. They are huge and dangerous and uber-macho. Just like me. But I'm a Liberal!

What, would I lie?